Hay Festival 2013: 'Irritating' silent letters could become obsolete

[FarCenter]

Leading linguist David Crystal tells the Telegraph Hay Festival 2013 that in 50 years' time silent letters will be dropped from many common words, thanks to the internet.

The internet will make English misspellings acceptable, according to one of the country’s most senior linguists, who predicts that in 50 years’ time many common words will be spelt without “irritating” silent letters.

David Crystal, currently professor of linguists at Bangor University, told the Telegraph Hay Festival that it would be “inevitable” that people would drop the ‘p’ from receipt, and change the ‘c’ from necessary into a ‘s’, as well as “simplifying” other words.

“Is it one ‘c’ and two ‘s’s in necessary or two ‘c’s and one ‘s’? It doesn’t actually matter at the end of the day. At the moment it matters, but over time one spelling will emerge and probably a simpler spelling will emerge.”

Prof Crystal said that he started monitoring the word “rhubarb” a decade ago, by typing in the correct spelling into a search engine, and then typing in the word without the ‘h’. He said: “I got millions of hits for rhubarb with the ‘h’, and just one or two without the ‘h’. I did the same job a few years later, and without the ‘h’ got hundreds of hits, and then a few years later hundreds of thousands of hits. Rhubarb is still the dominant one by a factor of 50. But think ahead 50 years – and that this is the time frame over which spellings change – and rhubarb with the ‘h’ and rhubarb without ‘h’ will be equal.”

He said that the ‘h’ was illogical and was never included in Middle English.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/hay-festival/10093089/Hay-Festival-2013-Irritating-silent-letters-could-become-obsolete.html

[FarCenter]

1. Hay Festival 2013: Oxford professor asks for grammar pedants to relax

Simon Horobin, an English professor, at Oxford university has suggested that apostrophe use should be more widely discussed and asks for spelling and grammar pedants to relax.

A leading Oxford University academic has implored “the grammar police” and spelling pedants to be a bit more relaxed about changing standards of written English. “Is the apostrophe so crucial to the preservation of our society?” he asked.

To gasps of shock from an audience at the Telegraph Hay Festival, Simon Horobin, an English professor at Magdalen College, Oxford said it was not sacrilegious to suggest that “they’re”, “their”, “there” could be spelt in the same way, he also indicated that “thru” or “lite” might not be such a sin.

He explained: “People like to artificially constrain language change. For some reason we think spelling should be entirely fixed and never changed. I am not saying we should just spell freely, but sometimes we have to accept spellings change.”

Prof Horobin, said that it was a “comparatively recent phenomenon” that we all stuck to a standard form of spelling, pointing out that in Middle English there were 500 different recorded spellings of “through”, including: drowgh, trowffe, trghug, yhurght. “Such” and “shall” were also spelt in numerous different ways.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/hay-festival/10086135/Hay-Festival-2013-Oxford-professor-asks-for-grammar-pedants-to-relax.html

[ananda]

7. Shaxpere concurrs.

..

[newfie11]

8. Lol. Nt

[Viva_La_Revolution]

17. Duzy!

You've just been nominated.

[Aristus]

27. He sure does.

For decades now, linguists have been able, by studying the variations in phonetic spelling common in Shakespeare's time, to partially reconstruct the accents of those times.

One of the interesting results of this endeavor has been the discovery that London aristocrats of Shakespeare's time spoke in an accent very similar to the modern Cockney, which is a working class accent.

[Glorfindel]

9. He has a point. "Alright" has come to be almost universal, and civilization has not crumbled

The best feature of the English language, I think, is that it's adaptable.

[newfie11]

2. Good, maybe I will finally learn to spell correctly nt

[Pragdem]

3. Spelling is one thing I have always been better at than everyone else.

I'll be damned if I stop being so pedantic about it.

[Nye Bevan]

24. Me to (nt)

[MineralMan]

4. Rationalizing spelling is something that has been proposed for

a very, very long time. This suggestion is not new at all. However, none of the proposals has ever worked. Why? Because how words are spelled reveals a lot about their meaning. That's not so important for the 5000 or so words people commonly use in speech, but is very important for the rest of the English vocabulary.

Without the weird spellings, we wouldn't be able to figure out what many of them mean, as we can now. Also, look at the two words, wood and would. Completely different meanings. If both were spelled as "wood" or "wud," the result would be confusion when those words were written and read. Homophones are a big problem when it comes to spelling reform.

The bottom line: It's not happening. It's been proposed many times, but the objections are real and make sense. The written word depends a great deal on spelling for understanding.

[FarCenter]

13. What has changed is the volume of distribution of unedited writing

Over that very long time, the main distribution of text has been books, magazines and newspapers that involved setting up expensive printing plates and making lots of copies.

In order to not make mistakes that would impair the value of that investment, publishers employed editors. Editors enforced grammar and spelling.

Now much of the writing being consumed by the public comes from unedited sources. Even on very popular web sites, grammar and spelling are sloppy. If someone comments on a particularly egregious error, the web site can correct the error simply and cheaply.

[MineralMan]

15. Yes, there is a lot of crappy spelling and grammar on the Internet.

I take special care with the web content I write for the businesses that are my clients. It's one of the reasons their websites do so well. It's up to the individual website, really. I have greater respect for those that take this issue seriously, and disregard websites that don't care at all.

That has nothing to do with rationalizing spelling, though.

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. Language evolves...period

Oh I just did the search for photography (correct spelling) Fotography, and fotografy... I got hits for all in English. If I got hits in Spanish (fotografia) I would not have been shocked.

Cool, language evolution is picking up speed.

[alphafemale]

6. In a bow to the idiocy of the English language. My cat's name is Psoghi.

Pronounced Sophie.

She's a cat. I would never afflict a child with an inventive spelling. The cat will never care if her name is misspelled.

[Glorfindel]

11. Charming! You could also feed her a "ghoti" and she would probably enjoy it greatly.

[alphafemale]

16. she loves fish.

but she has tummy troubles so she only gets a taste now and then.

She has mostly a special diet dry.

A cat constantly farting is not a good thing for the household.

ewwwww

[KitSileya]

10. Well, English is a sponge when it comes to incorporating new words, so that gives awful spelling

"The poem below is called "The Chaos" and was written by G. Nolst Trenite, a.k.a. Charivarius (1870-1946). See:

http://www.wordsmith.org/awad/english.html

Read it aloud:

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!"

Copied from http://www.i18nguy.com/chaos.html

[krispos42]

26. *blink*

And this is why I never paid much attention in English...

[Lasher]

12. Wonder how Prof. Cristal reacts if students spell his name wrong?

I hope is is equally magnanimous.

[JaneyVee]

14. This is DUM.

[FSogol]

18. Aren't the "Ye Olde Town Centre" places the main problem?

[FarCenter]

37. It should be "Þe Old Town Center", where Þ is the letter "thorn".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)

But Þ and þ have been replaced by Th and th.

[REP]

40. THANK YOU.

"Ye" when a thorn an e is meant drives me batshit.

[cherokeeprogressive]

19. Capital letters beginning sentences is already disappearing.

[Jackpine Radical]

28. really?

[cherokeeprogressive]

29. really.

[Jackpine Radical]

30. rEALLY!

[cherokeeprogressive]

32. welL iF yoU puT iT thaT waY, i mighT havE tO rethinK...

On a side note, I used to think my Dad was one of the smartest people in the whole world... that is, until he sent me an email. I was actually ashamed. More words were misspelled than not, there was NO punctuation, and his use of out of context words like hear vs here was shocking.

[Jackpine Radical]

35. My father had a third-grade education, poor grammar,etc.

He was a mechanical genius who invented & built amazing machines to automate many aspects of the process of building wood fishing boats.

Neither schooling or grammar equates to intelligence. I have a PhD & don't think I'm fundamentally smarter than he was.

[HappyMe]

20. Kind of silly.

Making everything the garbled mess that twitter is doesn't seem like a good idea.

[csziggy]

21. I disagree - My given name has a silent letter at the end

Though I do find that many, many people now don't know how to deal with silent letters. My first name is Anne and far too often these days people pronounce it "Annie." No, the "e" is SILENT! I don't accept "Annie" as my name so if a caller asks for "Annie" I tell them there is no one here by that name. It confuses some, others re-evaluate how they are reading the name and then ask for Anne pronounced correctly.

Besides if we drop silent letters, how do we tell the difference between "on" and "one"? "Can" and "cane"? There are far too many words in English that are differentiated by that final "e" to totally drop it from the language.

[Gormy Cuss]

31. The "e" at the end of Ann is silent, but the e in the other examples causes a pronounciation shift.

'One' wouldn't just lose the e -- it would probably fold into "won" which is more phonetic. Cane might become cain or cayn.

[randome]

33. The same way we differentiate between 'right', the direction, and 'right', the opposite of 'wrong'.

Context is everything.

Although both words will likely be changed eventually to something like 'rite'.

[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font]
[hr]

[niyad]

22. thank you

[randome]

23. It's part of the evolution of our brains.

We already speak and write in a condensed style that those a hundred years ago would find nearly incomprehensible. The more information we assimilate -and the faster we assimilate it- it makes sense that we would condense that information even further.

[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font]
[hr]

[Nye Bevan]

25. Cough, rough, bough, dough, through are SO annoying

when teaching kids to read.

So these could become coff, ruff, bow, doe and thru. Looks weird now but I guess we would get used to them.

[IDemo]

34. There, their, they're,,your, you're,,our, are....

If you consistently use the correct spellings in online discussions, ur in the minority.

[pansypoo53219]

36. butbutbut what about ain't? can i drop the apostrophe then?

[Flying Squirrel]

38. its up to u. nt

[meow2u3]

39. Shaxpeer is spinning in hiz graiv